Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Latin Is Dead, It's Plain to See

But it is one of the most popular languages taught in schools, only French, Spanish and German are more popular.

Really. We are involved in a lengthy war in the Middle East and China is a serious economic power and a growing military power; you'd think there would be a serious demand for Arabic and Mandarin. (Other than the point that they are among the two hardest languages in the world to learn, that is.)

In reading the article, Latin sounds more like a cult of language. I'll bet that you can learn a lot about grammar by studying any foreign language. Why pick a language that is not in common use anywhere on the planet, other than academia? Except for the fine distinction that nobody really knows how to pronounce the words, you might as well study Egyptian as study Latin. Sure you can read Virgil in the original if you study Latin, but you can also read Gilgamesh in the original if you study Sumerian.
on or about

2 comments:

  1. deadstick10/07/2008 3:54 PM

    Latin is a language,
    Dead as dead can be.
    First it killed the Romans,
    And now it’s killing me...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Fixer10/07/2008 6:35 PM

    Once again, my mother gets smarter as I get older. She always bugged me to learn Latin and I always balked. At least I can count in Latin, but that's the most useless part of the language.

    ReplyDelete

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